Why WinExe (win-x64) app publishing is host OS dependent

[sergey-tihon]

Why dotnet publish -r win-x64 -c release /p:PublishSingleFile=true produce different exe files on Windows and macOS?

It is strange that behavior of dotnet publish depends on my host OS and does not allow me to use my working machine (MacBook) to publish app for Windows users. Also I cannot publish app from Linux CI machine.

WinExe application published on macOS:

1. smaller than the same exe generated on Windows
2. does not have application icon
3. start as console application

Here is the repo with hello world Avalonia application https://github.com/sergey-tihon/avalonia-win-exe

uses latest sdk

{
  "sdk": {
    "version": "3.1.201"
  }
}

project file targets netcoreapp3.1 with output type WinExe

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp3.1</TargetFramework>
    <ApplicationIcon>icon.ico</ApplicationIcon>
    <PublishTrimmed>true</PublishTrimmed>
  </PropertyGroup>

both generated exe files are committed in result-exe folder

on the first screen you see the difference in size and application icon, here is the difference in application start. Application exe generated on macOS start console window first and only then show the window (this does not happened for exe published on Windows)

Original issue AvaloniaUI/Avalonia#3723

[swaroop-sridhar]

This is a dup of dotnet/runtime#3828
Currently HostModel uses Win32 API to update resources. Need to implement this functionality in managed code.

CC: @wli3